MILAN, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- Canada's Steven Dubois won gold in the men's 500 meters at the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games on Wednesday, while South Korea rallied from an incident mid-race to capture the women's 3,000m relay title.
Dubois, a four-time world champion, blasted into the lead from the start and held it throughout, clocking 40.835 seconds for his first individual Olympic gold. Dutch brothers Melle van 't Wout and Jens van 't Wout took silver and bronze respectively, with Jens earning his third medal of the Games.
"It was the one I was missing. I can't say it's never been on my mind, but I never wanted to really give myself hope, or make it an objective, because it's so hard. It's the toughest thing you can achieve, in short track, there's so much happening. It's difficult to describe it, honestly," Dubois said.
China's Liu Shaoang crashed on the final lap of the semifinals and missed final A. He later won final B. Teammate Lin Xiaojun was eliminated in the quarterfinals.
"We really hoped to deliver strong results and bring home gold medals for everyone during the Spring Festival, but we didn't manage to win one. It feels tough and quite regretful. We hope everyone can understand us - we truly gave it everything we had," Liu said.
The women's 3,000m relay produced a dramatic finish after a collision with 16 laps remaining involving Canada and the Netherlands. A Dutch skater fell and slid into a South Korean skater, leaving South Korea well adrift of Canada and Italy.
South Korea reeled the leaders back in over the closing laps. With five laps remaining, Italy surged past Canada to take the lead and lift the home crowd, but Kim Gil-li found a gap on the inside with two laps to go, slipped past Arianna Fontana and sprinted home for gold in 4 minutes 4.014 seconds. Italy took silver and Canada claimed bronze.
"I saw there was a chance for an inside pass, I just tried and I went through. I'm really happy to get the gold medal together with my teammates," Kim said.
The silver was Fontana's 14th Olympic medal, making her Italy's most decorated Olympian and moving her past fencing great Edoardo Mangiarotti, who won 13 medals between 1936 and 1960.
China's quartet of Gong Li, Wang Xinran, Zhang Chutong and Yang Jingru beat Japan and France to win final B.
"Today we fully showed what we're capable of. We felt relaxed going into the race. We had no way back, so we just pushed forward without hesitation," Wang said. ■
